


The Return

by titC



Series: The Couch [5]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Feels, Gen, mattelektraweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-19 16:36:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17005230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titC/pseuds/titC
Summary: It's in the title ;-)





	The Return

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [PixelByPixel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PixelByPixel) for betaing!  
> For my DaredevilBingo prompt _I don’t want to lose you_ and the [12 Days of MattElektra](https://fadedtoblue.tumblr.com/post/180008518352/announcing-our-holiday-event-twelve-days-of) prompt _Back With You_.

For about a week now, Matt has been aware of someone following him. He hears the same slightly too quiet heartbeat, soft noises like silk on leather, well-worn shoes hitting concrete behind him. Metal, sometimes. A perfume, too – just a hint, left behind like a calling card.

Being followed as Daredevil is nothing but he’s also being followed as Matt Murdock, and that is worrying. He’s pondering the wisdom of a visit to Fisk, but tipping him off about a potential ally in case it’s _not_ Fisk… Matt, for once, chooses to wait. To gather some information before doing A Murdock, as Foggy has started to call some of his ‘stunts’. Foggy _says_ they’re stunts, but Matt doesn’t agree. It’s just that Karen is siding with Fogs on that one, and he ignores them when they’re ganging up on him. He does think before doing. Usually. When it’s possible. Sometimes there just isn’t time to plan, you know?

But there’s something else that’s making him wait. It’s that the perfume, the heartbeat, the silk-and-leather… they’re familiar. Even the metallic sound reminds him of one particular thing (well, two). It’s just… it can’t be. It’s been so long now, and he hoped and waited for a long time but then it was just too painful and he just… he stopped. He doesn’t want, no, he _can’t_ go through all of it again. He can’t take the heartbreak again.

It’s not Elektra.

But it can’t be anyone else.

 

This little cat and mouse game of theirs lasts for a few more days and every time it seems she’s closer; but she won’t make contact. He tries to tell himself that even if it sounds and smells like Elektra, even if the presence _feels_ like her, it’s not her. A clone, an evil twin, the empty shell that only contained the Black Sky… But he knows it’s not. The Hand could never tame her, she had been stronger than they’d expected: she was untameable. When Midland Circle had fallen down around them, on them, it had been her. Fully her, there in the end. In his arms.

But why now? Why didn’t she come back before? Why did she let him believe she was dead? Something doesn’t make sense, and he’s so consumed by it that he gets sloppy and the mugger’s knife slices his arm. _Shit, that_ _could_ _need a few stitches._ He focuses and finishes off the fight quickly before climbing on a roof to keep an ear on the scene. The young couple he’s helped have called the police, and he’ll stay until the NYPD gets there.

After that, he’ll probably call it a night or, more accurately, an early morning. He feels the knife wound with his fingertips, and decides to make a pit stop at the church before heading home. He definitely needs a couple stitches. And, maybe, some sisterly (motherly) care. He might be late for work, but if he says he went to see Maggie he knows Foggy and Karen will not complain. Much.

He leaves the scene just before the officers can spot him.

 

Saturday nights are for partying, but when you are Matt Murdock they’re for getting trapped in a shipping container and surrounded by drug dealers. Very angry ones. They’ve got guns, too; and there’s nowhere to hide. The container is empty. The only thing he can do is charge them and hope it’s dark enough that they won’t try to shoot.

They try to shoot.

He manages to dodge the first volley, but he’s not sure he’s going to make it out alive. Shit, and he’s supposed to do the closing statement on Monday. Foggy will kill him a second time if he dies. Just as he wrestles an automatic from a huge guy he’s hoping to use as a human shield, there is a scream and then the smell of blood, of a lot of blood, hits his nose. In a few seconds, all the men are down. Not dead, their hearts are still beating; but they’re unconscious or near enough.

And there’s that heartbeat, that perfume. He’s frozen, he wants to move, he wants to get closer and touch and, and. He can’t move.

“Hello, Matthew.”

He can’t speak, either. He’s probably gaping like a fish. It’s her voice. He wants to laugh, he wants to cry.

“Cat got your tongue?”

She’s closer. She’s so close, almost as close as they were when the concrete and the rebar and the choking dust were crashing down all around them. He could touch her, if only he could move.

“Oh, Matthew… didn’t you know? Didn’t you hear me?”

Finally, finally. Finally, his body is responding again. He takes his mask off, and the cool, late autumn air hits his face. He doesn’t dare try and touch her because maybe he’s hallucinating, after all. Wouldn’t be the first time he’s having hallucinations, right?

She’s the one who takes the last step. Deliberately, intentionally noisy on the loose gravel; but he’s not running away. He doesn't want to escape. When her palm is flat on his chest, he realizes he’s still panting, and he tries to slow down his breathing. He’d like to say something, to say her name at least, but he can’t.

Her hand slides up to his neck, his cheek; then down again to his shoulder. Oh, he’s still panting after all. She’s so close, their chests are almost touching with every breath he takes.

“It’s me,” she whispers. “It’s really me.”

Something breaks open in him. Matt’s not sure if it’s sweat or tears on his face. He doesn’t care. He hides it in her neck and he’s not letting go, not ever again.

 

An hour later, he still can’t trust she’s real. She teases him for letting himself get trapped and needing her help, and he’s not saying he’d have put himself in worse situations if that had meant her return. She can probably guess, anyway. She’s always known him best.

Back in his apartment, he still can’t bear to be more than an arm’s length away from her. He hears her take her suit off, he hears the leather hit the wooden floorboards. She’s naked in front of him, and he’s just standing there like an idiot. He thinks maybe, if he could see, he could let her be two arms’ length away. As long as he could see her.

But he’s blind.

“I’m having a shower,” she says. He nods dumbly. Sure, of course. He can still smell the blood from earlier on her. Makes sense. A shower, yes. “Matthew?” He nods again.

She’s amused, he can feel it. She’s right against him again, helping him take his own clothes off because he finds he’s forgotten how. She’s alive. She’s here. She came back, it’s really her, she came back to him.

“Elektra,” he says. He surprises even himself.

“Yes, Matthew.” She sighs. “I’m sorry, I really am. I just… it took me time, to recover myself. Most of it.” He catches her fingers in his. They feel just like they always have. “You were what made me hold on, go on. You were my end goal, Matthew.” She’s always loved saying his name. His full name. She’s always known all of him.

“Elektra,” he repeats. He doesn't need any other word anyway.

She steps closer, rests her head on his shoulder. “At first, I didn’t know if you had survived. I got out somehow, and I could find nothing about you, and so I ended them all. The Hand. All their organization, everything, everyone. I left no one. No one.”

Matt hears her, right here: ruthlessness and revenge and blood, so much blood. But he can’t find it in him to see the wrong in it, this time. He rests his chin on her head and rocks them slowly. He needs it too, as she goes on.

“I went back to Greece, I reestablished my identity, my assets; and then I… I didn’t have anything else to do.” Her breath hitches, and Matt finally dares to wrap an arm fully around her. Her skull still fits his hand perfectly, too. He undoes her ponytail and lets her hair sift through his fingers. She relaxes a bit more against him, and he knows he does too. “I waited. I didn’t know what to do. I had no one to fight, and all I remembered was that someone had believed in me once, and that they were dead.”

“I still believe in you,” he whispers. “I never stopped.”

“I know.” She turns her head a little and brushes her lips against his. He may have stopped breathing, he’s so dizzy. The world is spinning around him. Her voice brings him back, back to reality. To Elektra, here with him. “Then I heard you were alive, and I did everything – everything I could, to come back as soon as possible.”

“And now you’re here,” Matt says.

He can feel her smile against his lips. She hums, and gently pushes him back into the bathroom. They’re soon both naked under the water, and he’s touched to feel her looking for and finding every new scar on his body. They’ve got rituals, he thinks. The two of them. She’s got some scars too, and he is mapping them with his fingers and in his mind. Knife, bullet, serrated blade, glass. The soap makes their skins glide against each other, there’s absolutely no friction. Nothing hurts. He wants to stay there forever and let the world go on without them.

But everything ends, even the hot water; and so they get out and dry off and end up on his bed.

“I dreamed of you,” he says.

She’s appropriated some of his warmest clothes and they’re face to face on the covers. He can feel her slow, measured breaths on his hand between them. “I came here once, after I… died. When I was trying to learn more about who I had been, before. I ended up here. I slept on this bed. I dreamed, too.”

He smiles. “Was it a good dream?”

She doesn't answer, but she does wriggle closer to him. Her lips fall on his and she’s smiling, he can feel she’s smiling. He kisses her back and he thinks, how long has it been since they could do just that? Did they ever just hold each other, touch and kiss and do everything lovers do, without anything or anyone breathing down their necks? Without Stick pulling the strings or one of them bleeding out or with the Hand ready to kill them on the other side of a door?

Never, he thinks. Never.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he says into her skin. “I can’t. Not again.” He won’t survive it, he knows. He won’t.

“I’m not going anywhere, Matthew.” She’s half on top of him and her hands are everywhere, _everywhere_. He’d like to believe her, but she’s Elektra. She can never stay in one place for long, she – “I’ll always come back to you, I promise.”

“So you’ll leave?” He’s holding her hips hard, holding her so she doesn’t crumble into nothing and leave him stranded again. Drifting. He’s holding on for her dear life.

“I’m not leaving you. But I’m…”

He twists and turns them around and he’s right above her. Caging her in with his own body because she can’t leave, she _can’t_. She doesn’t protest, but her heartbeat speeds up. Her skin is getting just that hotter, and he’s always cold, so cold. She feels like home. “Don’t leave. Please.” His voice breaks. He hates begging, and she won’t care about prayers, and he doesn't know what to do to get her to stay.

“Matthew, I’m… I was dead, then I wasn’t, then I almost killed you. Several times. You can’t trust me.”

“I do.”

“I know.”

They don’t speak much after that.

 

On Monday morning, Matt feels better than he has in a long, long while; and not just because Saturday’s drug dealers’ boss is now in the hands of the NYPD. Elektra just left, and her smell still lingers everywhere in his apartment; the bed and the towels and the scarf she borrowed when they went for a walk on Sunday afternoon.

He suspects he’s got a stupid smile on his face and that Foggy and Karen will try and get him to spill, but that’s not an option. He promised he’d keep her presence a secret for now, let her keep the pace of her coming back to life (into his life); and he will.

Still, he wears the scarf all day long, even in court.


End file.
